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The Biden administration is moving one step closer to developing a central bank digital currency, known as the digital dollar, saying it would help reinforce the U.S. role as a leader in the world financial system.

The White House said on Friday that after President Joe Biden issued an executive order in March calling on a variety of agencies to look at ways to regulate digital assets, the agencies came up with nine reports, covering cryptocurrency impacts on financial markets, the environment, innovation and other elements of the economic system. Continue reading →

The share of Americans who say inflation is causing them financial hardship has risen from 49 percent in January to 56 percent, with rising prices forcing 69 million households to make cutbacks, a survey revealed on Wednesday.

The Gallup survey found that ever-more wealthy and middle-class families were feeling the pinch from inflation, forcing them to spend less on groceries and other basics, drive less and cancel vacations.

A worrying 12 percent of the survey’s 1,570 respondents said they were experiencing ‘severe hardship’ that was lowering their standard of living — a rise on the 9 percent who said so at the start of 2022… (Continue to full article)

From drastically underestimating the cost to blaming Republicans for hypocrisy, the White House is flailing.

Joe Biden is being awfully “generous” with your money. His student loan “forgiveness” scheme is the biggest news of the week (maybe the summer), and we’ve covered it here and here. Today we want to focus on two things: Cost and hypocrisy.

Before full details were known, the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated the cost of Biden’s plan to be “between $300 billion and $980 billion over the 10-year budget window.” Then Biden increased the giveaway to $20,000 for many recipients, which will of course increase the cost.

For the most part, White House officials have gone out of their way to avoid answering the question of cost. “Well, that that remains to be determined, and it will be a function of what percentage of eligible borrowers actually take up this opportunity,” said domestic policy adviser Susan Rice. “If 43 million borrowers take it up, that’ll be different than if 50% of those 43 million take it up.” (Continue reading…)

Some say he’s doing this to buy their votes. At the same time, Congress is questioning the expensive bailout. They are supposed to control the purse strings, not the so-called President. Still, the Democrat-controlled Congress may go along because they are also looking for a spark going into the midterms.

It’s not right for Biden to attempt to buy votes, but he’s a crook and we’ve all grown accustomed to his outrages. Expecting taxpayers and those who have already paid off their college loans to bail out those still saddled with college debt doesn’t exactly smack of fairness. Why not simply give all Americans $10,000? Inflation is already out of control and so Biden might as well go full Zimbabwe. Continue reading →

If you are convinced that the economy is already in a recession or hurtling toward one, the housing starts data for July provided more evidence to support your conviction. New housing construction decreased to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 1.446 million. This was 9.6 below the June estimate of 1.599 million and 8.1 percent below the year-earlier level. Economists had forecast 1.54 million.

Starts are now down below the prepandemic peak of 1.571 million. The pandemic-induced flight from the cities construction boom peaked in April of this year at 1.805 million. We’re now down nearly 20 percent from that peak. Continue reading →